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BHASHA SAMACHAR December 2018 BHASHA SAMACHAR December 2018 FICCI-INDIAN LANGUAGE INTERNET ALLIANCE NEWSLETTER An alliance to foster the growth of Indian Languages Technology Industry to enable access to ICT infrastructure in all Indian languages. Welcome to the 4th edition of FICCI – Indian languages internet alliance (FICCI-ILIA) newsletter. You will find all the exciting news, views and events from the Indic language ecosystem captured in this space! Where we stand now: 253FICCI-ILIA is 254members strong now! FICCI-Indian Language Internet Alliance Newsletter ADDRESS BY MS. SARIKA GULYANI Director and Head-ICT, Digital Economy & FICCI-ILIA Division As FICCI-ILIA completes a year, I would users in India, NLP will become key to like to take this opportunity to thank business success. you for your support and wholehearted contribution to make this journey an Natural Language Processing and exceptional one. The first year has been Understanding (NLP/NLU) technologies marked with fruitful collaborations with have moved beyond mere text translations various government departments and and are now able to perform voice and private organizations. I am happy that we speech synthesis as well as sentiment successfully launched the flagship event analysis. Major sectors, such as information of FICCI-ILIA “Bhashantara” which was and communication technology, widely attended by our members and the healthcare, banking and finance, education, Indic language community at large. automobile are adopting NLP to improve efficiency, gain insights and identify the 2019 is going to be an equally most pertinent information from large exciting year for FICCI-ILIA, given the databases. A recent report points out that advancement in AI and specifically in the NLP market is poised to grow at a Natural Language Processing (NLP) world CAGR of 16.1 % until 2021, which translates over. to a $16 billion market opportunity.1 India has also made major strides in In this edition we bring to you the language technology in the past few thoughts and views of various subject years. The government of India through matter experts and thought leaders about its many initiatives like Digital India, Make the growth curve of the Indian Language in India and mandating Indian phone technology market and the various manufacturers to support its numerous challenges it is poised to face. Taking a official languages has bolstered the effort cue from these insightful articles, we have towards a multilingual internet. This commenced our activities focusing on growth will be further supported by huge working with the Industry and government technological advancement in NLP and to nurture innovation in NLP, promote machine translation technologies. use and adoption of available tools by generating awareness amongst buyers and NLP in the past couple of decades has users and connecting organizations and revolutionized the world wide web into government bodies to explore business a more inclusive space as digital content growth. With a member base of 250+, in various languages has become widely FICCI-ILIA is poised to undertake exciting available on the Internet. However projects in all the important areas and form content available in Indian languages is further collaborative partnerships as we still lagging behind and with a massive enter 2019. influx of non-English first-time internet 1 https://www.analyticsinsight.net/how-natural- language-processing-nlp-is-a-blessing-for-healthcare- organisations/ accessed 11 January, 2018 FICCI-Indian Language Internet Alliance Newsletter Opinion Articles2 UNLOCKING DIGITAL BHARAT: USHERING IN THE INDIC INTERNET ECOSYSTEM By Dr. Subi Chaturvedi President – YES Global Institute, YES BANK & Former Member, UN-IGF, MAG Tweets @subichaturvedi Today, with over 500 million internet taken early steps towards bringing high- users, India is the second largest online speed internet connectivity to over 700 market in the world, only behind China. villages. As India’s digital infrastructure Thanks to a strong technology industry challenges gradually get addressed, the base, rapid growth in availability of country’s ‘Digital India’ vision needs to affordable smartphones, cheap mobile be supported by a strong Indic Internet data plans, as well as a sound policy ecosystem. push by governments at all levels, India’s Shaping a digital society that integrates wireless telephony and broadband all social spheres, is crucial for India’s subscribers have touched ~1189 mn and inclusive development. Although English 463.66 mn[1], respectively. Government’s continues to have a high aspirational value BharatNet program that aims to connect 250,000 gram Panchayats (GPs) through a network of optical fiber, has nearly 2 The views, thoughts and opinions expressed in all the articles under this section solely belong to the touched the halfway mark. At the same authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy time, government’s DigiGaon scheme, has or position of FICCI-ILIA. FICCI-Indian Language Internet Alliance Newsletter in India, only around 10 percent of Indians leading cab aggregators operating in India are estimated to speak the language. This - Uber and Ola, have taken the vernacular necessitates localization of the Internet route to further strengthen their position with vernacular languages to empower in the market with localized offerings, the country’s non-English-speaking vast making their platform available in multiple majority. Indian languages. Amazon Web Services - a subsidiary of Amazon.com, has launched Hindi language support for ‘Amazon Polly’, A FAST EVOLVING INDIC a machine learning service that turns INDUSTRY LANDSCAPE text to speech and supports both Indian English and Hindi. As year 2018 witnessed considerable momentum towards creation of a 5G Startups are stepping in ecosystem in the country, the field of With a surge in usage of smartphones, Indic Language Internet ecosystem has coupled with rapid growth in internet also seen itself take several large strides, penetration driven by telecom operators with both technology majors as well as offering cheap data across India, a new new-age startups gearing up to tap the breed of startups – the vernacular startups potential in this space: - are coming to the fore. Right from News Technology giants are leading the Publications (e.g. Dailyhunt), Localization way platforms (e.g. Process9), e-payments (e.g. Bijlipay), Language-as-a-Service (e.g. Global technology giants have announced Reverie), Regional Operating systems (e.g. major initiatives to bring Indian languages Indus OS), Text-to-speech (e.g. IndianTTS), to the forefront. Google, which already Networking platforms (e.g. ShareChat), supports 9 Indian Languages in ‘Google to Typing software (e.g Lipikaar) – these Search’, unveiled ‘Project Navlekha’ startups are building products in diverse this year, to bring India’s 135,000 Indic language publications online. Microsoft India, on the other hand, announced the availability of new phonetic keyboards in ten Indian languages to members of its Windows Insider Program. World’s most popular messenger app – WhatsApp and its parent Facebook, already allow users in the country to change language, supporting 11 and 13 Indian languages respectively. Similarly, FICCI-Indian Language Internet Alliance Newsletter converts text into data, and learning from the data patterns, not always resulting in contextual conversion. Adding to the problem is the fact that Indic languages are derived from Brahmic scripts, which aren’t easy for NLP to understand. Monetizing vernacular content Content monetization has been one of the foremost challenges among all. Despite the existence of a huge pool of local language users, with merely 1 per cent of online content (text) in Indic languages, advertisers haven’t shown the required willingness to explore this segment. On the other hand, with fewer revenue generation options, publishers think twice before creating Indic language online content. While emerging platforms such areas, drawing significant attention of as Google’s Navlekha provides Indian marque investors, raising millions of dollars language publishers with free web hosting, of funding. there is a need for more such platforms. KEY CHALLENGES GOVERNMENT LEADING FROM India’s Indic language content ecosystem THE FRONT is still nascent, with numerous barriers, Central Government’s phenomenal particularly in the areas of contextual thrust in building a strong ecosystem conversion and content monetizing: of Indian Language Internet is evident Natural Language Processing (NLP) from a number of initiatives taken in this direction. Right from mandating Indic- Natural Language Processing (NLP), language support for mobile devices to powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and supporting multiple Indian languages in Machine Learning (ML) is instrumental key mobile platforms such as UMANG in proliferation of local languages online. (Unified Mobile Application for New-Age However, current methods for NLP are Governance) and BHIM (Bharat Interface largely about computational statistics that FICCI-Indian Language Internet Alliance Newsletter for Money), the government has taken With an estimated 234 million users, Indian several encouraging steps to promote language internet users have already vernacular online content in the country. outnumbered English language internet users (175 million) online[3]. Therefore, C-DAC (Centre for Development of digital content localization makes Advanced Computing) - the premier complete business sense for all players
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